10 October 2023 , 17:00
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As the long-lost son of Cain Dingle (Jeff Hordley), Emmerdale's Nate Robinson (Jurell Carter) was never exactly going to live a quiet life in the Dales. Since bursting into the village in 2019, filled with revenge for the father he initially believed had abandoned him, Nate has kept viewers gripped throughout various rollercoaster storylines, from steamy affairs to accidentally being shot by his own family.
Away from Tug Ghyll, actor Jurell, 31, leads a very different life indeed. The Leicester-born thespian has a little-known talent that nearly saw him take another career path completely, and he's also previously left fans stunned following a racy Instagram blunder.
A raunchy Instagram blunder left Jurell's fans blushingFootballing dreams
Before finding his way as an actor, Jurell initially dreamt of becoming a footballer for Birmingham City, but things didn't quite work out as he first planned. At the age of 18, talented Jurell won a partial scholarship to play football all over the US, but his family, unfortunately, were unable to pay the rest of the necessary costs, meaning he couldn't go.
Reflecting on this early disappointment in a 2020 interview with the Mirror, Jurell said: "It was heartbreaking. I had loved football from the age of three. When I got offered the scholarship to the University of South Carolina Aiken it was amazing but I couldn't find the funds to pay for the rest of it so I couldn't go. What I was offered would have covered 65 per cent of the costs but I would still have had to find the other 35 per cent, which was beyond my means. I was so devastated. It was something I loved so passionately, for it then not to go through... it was heartbreaking."
As one door closed, however, another one opened, with this setback prompting Jurell to consider a career he previously hadn't had the confidence to pursue - acting. Jurell continued: "I knew that I had to follow something else that I was passionate about but hadn't had the confidence to do, and that was acting. I always had loved it, whether reciting movie lines or playing superheroes in the garden with my cousin and my friends, doing different accents.
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"But I never really had the confidence to pursue it. But as cliched as it sounds, life is so short and I didn't want to have any regrets. Losing out on the football career made me determined to succeed in acting. I believe that no matter where you come from, if you can see something, visualise it, and have the passion then you can achieve it."
Thankfully, acting proved to be the right path for Jurell, who graduated from The Liverpool Insitute for Performing Arts (LIPA) back in 2016, having become the first of three actors ever to receive a BAFTA scholarship in 2015 to support his final year studies. Before landing the role of Nate, Jurell appeared in an episode of Doctors, and in the acclaimed Channel 4 mini-series, Kiri (2018), alongside Sarah Lancashire.
Raunchy 'sex tape' blunder
Jurell left Instagram followers blushing back in 2021 after sharing what initially appeared to be an X-rated video to his Instagram stories. The clip in question showed a bare-chested Jurell from the torso up, sweating, shaking, and bobbing up and down. He captioned the story: "Physically I'm sweating on a dull day in Yorkshire. Mentally I'm in Jamaica on the beach sippin' couple cocktails... we move."
After stunned fans messaged him trying to figure out what he was actually doing, Jurell responded with some laughing emojis, explaining: "Let a man live. I was on my spin bike." After the matter was cleared up, one person commented: "It looked like he had posted his own sex tape by mistake. Disappointed to realise he was just riding his bike."
Emmerdale airs weeknights at 7:30pm on ITV1 and ITVX, with an hour-long episode on Thursdays.